X3: Terran Conflict / Albion prelude MODS

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Soldato
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Very much a work in progress as I am currently re-downloading and finding mods and scripts I used to run and the game itself. All are welcome to help me flesh this out.

This will need much formatting and you may well wish to just skip to the list of mods. I have added in explanations for those wanting to know more.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Should I mod my game?
3.] Which mods/scripts to download and what is XRM?
3.a] Playing with XRM
3.b] Playing without XRM

1.-Introduction

Hey, with X3: TC and AP coming on sale it's a fair bet that a lot of new players are going to pick it up who have very little knowledge about the series. Now I won't profess to know everything about these games and there are going to be many people no this forum who know it better. I do however know what it is like to jump into this game and I have spent a long time trolling through the egosoft forums looking for new ways to improve the game.

2. - Should I mod my game?

Yes. This game is old and it wasn't built very efficiently. If you've played a bethseda game you know what it is like to play a great game that is made 100x better by the modding community. Well this game is that and more.

It is important to note that there are a handful of mods that require a fresh start to the game and thus you should not consider playing part of the game through first. This game can take 200 hours of your life away and you do not want to just restart that.

I could go into great detail as to why all these mods greatly improve your game play but you wouldn't really appreciate it because you haven't played the game to realise just how much better it could be. I'll give you a few quick examples quick example of a minor script you should add:

Crashing into a jump gate (to get between sectors) will net you a relationship hit with the owning factor or a hotkey that allows you to turn off accidentally shooting at the station you're trying to doc with. Or more importantly, the fact the whole terran economy is guaranteed to collapse in every single play through unless modded to prevent this along with quite likely the rest of the world eventually. You wouldn't know these were a problem until you played the game. Of course I am going to list far more juicy mods and scripts to add to spice your game up than simple fixes.

Through a combination of mods and scripts you will bring your game to life and add new features you couldn't bare to live without such as simple scripts to control your trade ships automatically so you don't spend hours micromanaging them or scripts that fix the turret systems on your 30 gun capital ship so that it prioritises sensible targets and lays waste to your enemies. Of course, any upgrade you get your enemies get as well ;).

3. - Which mods/scripts to download and what is XRM

ALL MODS/SCRIPTS WILL BE LISTED UNDER THE ASSUMPTION YOU HAVE TC AND AP INSTALLED

I'm currently in the process of going through these my self and will likely be adding more as I find them. I'm not going to go into detail how to install them all because there are a multitude of guides that I could not possibly write better.

What is XRM?

XRM stands for "X3 Rebalance Mod". It is a total conversion of the game and vastly improves it in all aspects. You can find a full list of details here .

What you should know about it is that it will make your life harder going through the game if you have never played it before. It is extremely difficult to get into this game without any help from the wiki sites. So much so that I had them open next to me on my laptop when ever I played the game. The changes to the game mean that the information in these wikis cannot be relied upon and you must work things out for your self. This is fine for anyone who has sunk some time into the games but it might come as a shock.

XRM is a complete overhaul of the game and as such is not compatible with a multitude of mods that I would suggest you use if you chose not to use XRM and hence I will provide two lists. I am however going to be playing a XRM game my self and so I am going on memory and using intuition to work out what will work together for the non-XRM list. The majority of mods that I will suggest have all likely been incorporated one way or another into XRM but to a lesser extent as to not completely overhaul the game. For example, I will fully suggest a mod that will freeze the terran economy at the start of the game to prevent its collapse due to an "intelligent AI" in the game that actively removes and destroys factories in the game.

A list of many mods and scripts can be found here but it does not contain all of them and is extremely lengthy to troll through your self:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=216690

It should be noted that I have no reason to believe these will conflict as I have ran the majority of them together previously but I am currently in the process of downloading everything my self and with my exams coming up do not fully have time to test these. You should cause no harm to your game provided you install and uninstall things correctly but ultimately moding your game is always at your own risk.

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Important Note

Not all mods/scripts are compatible with AP. I am currently in the process of trying to weed out which ones are and while it is safe to assume that the vast majority still are, you must watch out for mods/scripts that specifically state they are only compatible with TC.

Secondly, you will notice I frequently interchange between the word scripts and mods. That is because you will be installing both and they are different. Scripts are almost completely harmless and very rarely conflict with anything. If you have two scripts that affect the same thing they will simply override each other depending on the order in which the plugin manager has them loaded. This may cause errors in your game or it may not, regardless they should be harmless and easily fixed. Mods contain extra files to go along with these scripts and are more likely to conflict.

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3.a - Playing with XRM

If you have chosen this path you have, in my opinion, chosen the stronger game and you will hopefully get more enjoyment out of it. I also expect this list to be more stable because the majority of the most important mods are already incorporated into XRM and/or written by people who have worked with the XRM dev team. As a result, you will notice that the vast majority of these already come recommended on the XRM page and you are free to read through it your self and pick and choose.

I haven't 100% checked but I believe that the only mod that requires a fresh start here is XRM and thus others can be added when you like. If you are unsure it is not hard for you to check your self.

1. X3PA Bonus Package 5.1.00

Some of the most useful tools. So much so that egosoft them selves suggest playing their games with them and I would strongly recommend you do.

2.XRM

I recommend taking all the addons bar the No argon/terran war pack as I have not played AP yet so I am unsure of what this will really affect.

3.Freight Distribution Network Lite

4. STO 1.57 - overtake sectors

5. Logain Industries Capital Ship Energy Cell Generator (CSecG)

6. Tatakau's Marine Repairs

7. Salvage Commands & NPCs

You will see thate you require other scripts to install these and that others are recommended. I fully suggest them.

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Here are a list of mods that I recommend from this page: http://www.hentschke-keramik.de/x3scripts_tc.php3

8. Align ship with ecliptic
9. Auto Aim
10. Auto Jump, terran jump
11. Hitting jumpgates causes no notoriety loss
12. Landing Booster
13. Mars Fire Control This has special install instructions for XRM as it is already integrated into the files and so you actually have to do less work to install it.

14. Missile Display
15. Missile safety
16. NICE Interface Enhancement
17. Numerical Race ranks
18. Set the course!
19.Safe undocking / jumping, very important!
20. Turret On/Off Hotkey

End of list from this website
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21.Station friendly fire hotkey

Many more to be added but I have a head ache and these will get you going for now.


3.b - Playing without XRM

I will continue on this when I can. It takes a lot of work to research all these and I want to make sure I choose the right "big mod" to go with the little ones. This will be a mod that drastically changes the AI in the game to make it smarter and there are several options and only 1 can be picked.

If you have chosen this list you are likely new to the game and this is also how I learnt the game. It will consist of a series of mods and scripts which will drastically enhance the game but try and keep it as close to the wikis and help pages out there. You will find that some ships will be modified and some sectors may have been added or changed but you should not struggle to find your way around.
 
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Cracking post MumboJumbo. I've never even looked at the modding side of this game yet as the vanilla is still a head scratcher. If I find some time - of which this game takes a lot - then I'll certainly be looking into XRM

Cheers.
 
No problem guys. My actual knowledge on the game itself is a lil rusty as it has been over a year since I played, but I've sunk about 250 hours into it so if you guys have any questions I will try and help.

NZB said:
Don't forget the X3:TC Extended mod that finally released the other week after 4 years of work done http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=293490&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
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This sadly isn't compatible with AP, but I may draft up a 3rd list for just TC if people want but that might not be for a while. I'm hoping to get something up for non XRM tonight.

:EDIT:

Just found some pretty big typo's stating the opposite of what I meant in the OP haha. I meant to say I will be playing an XRM game if anyone was wondering.
 
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Cavallino said:
So many files/mods etc... why is a game so complicated :)

Just one question, why both with TC if you have Albion Prelude?
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I've yet to actually get chance to play AP but it is an expansion to TC and you must have TC to run it. It's actually not as confusing as you might think. Once you learn the game you'll find something you dislike or seems needlessly irritating and you look for a mod/script and you will find it.

There are something like 5 or 6 major quest lines in this game and I mean major, they will take hundreds of hours, one of which is called the hub missions. Now I won't spoil anything, but lets just say that there are plenty of mods to reduce that mission down because it is a hefty one haha.

I expect the XRM list to probably reach about 30 mods and the non-XRM list to possibly reach 40. It depends on which overhaul is chosen for it as some may not be compatible with other things I'd usually suggest.

:edit:

Finally got AP installed and I also just checked out the map online and it is indeed just an expansion to the game. From first impressions I can't see a reason to not play AP unless you want to play TC specific mods. I was worried that playing a modded AP might be harder to get into than TC but it just looks like they have added a few new features.
 
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I'd start with TC first as AP isn't quite as new player friendly. If you decide to go with AP then i'd suggest reading a lot of the guides over on the X3 forums first.
 
You reckon? I've just been looking through the changes between the two and from what I can see, AP has added a lot of the communities work into the game and really added to it.

Do you mean that it is less new player friendly because of the war going on between argon and terran? The combat is hard in X3 but I don't think that should be a problem. Looking from the changes, I would suggest AP, but I haven't played it like I presume NZB has.
 
AP is more of a game for someone used to the X3 universe as it expects you to know things that you would learn naturally in games like TC. I personally play AP over TC these days but i'd have been clueless if i'd just jumped into it without having played TC or Reunion beforehand.

You would be fine Mumbo as you've played TC but Cavallino would be in for a fair bit of reading (well, more reading than TC) to not feel lost in AP.
 
It's the same engine. TC was the engine upgrade to the series. The hardest thing with the X3 games is your start. You get dumped in the middle of space and because it's a sim game you literally can just go anywhere straight away. The guides point you in the right direct and say look you should start this plot and look for these items. From what I can gather, AP has changed the terran campaign and that campaign was the "easy" start for new players. It gives you a lot of nice ships for free and it keeps you on a steady difficulty increase. You probably won't find that in AP. I do presume that they have made the game accessible to new players too though.

I can draw up a TC mod list as well later if people aren't going to be playing AP but it will be after the new year most likely and you will require a restart to your game if you want to use the overhaul mod to go with it, which I would recommend, but there is no harm in pottering about to learn the game first. You are going to die a lot at first.

:EDIT:

That makes sense NZB. Well this is a set back, I was aiming my post at people new to the X3 world so that they would get into it easily without having to play through it and then restart and find mods haha.
 
It just depends on the person really, the suggestion to start with TC is just a general one. Whichever game people start with they have a lot to learn either way and thinking on it, the type of person that would enjoy the X3 universe likely wouldn't mind delving into all the guides anyway. There were plenty of video crash courses for TC when i first started playing and there are probably some for AP now too, they'd probably be a good place to start.

AP is the more fleshed out experience of the two overall.
 
That is a very good point. I remember learning how to finally do trading through a very useful guide on youtube. These games have a lot to give but you can't expect them to feed you want you need to know and I think it is very true that the people who enjoy these games enjoy them because half the fun is learning them.

Surely there isn't that much difference between the two games though? It's only an expansion. I thought the big difference was just the campaign not holding your hand quite as much and I use that term loosely because the TC one very much does not hold your hand.

:EDIT:

AP has head tracking that you can use with proper gear or try with your webcam for some form of head tracking. Awesome haha.
 
NZB said:
AP is more of a game for someone used to the X3 universe as it expects you to know things that you would learn naturally in games like TC. I personally play AP over TC these days but i'd have been clueless if i'd just jumped into it without having played TC or Reunion beforehand.

You would be fine Mumbo as you've played TC but Cavallino would be in for a fair bit of reading (well, more reading than TC) to not feel lost in AP.
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Hmm problem is I dont have a lot of time to play games (now being the exception during the holiday season :)).

So should I just pick up the basics in TC and then start proper in AP?
 
Going to try some of these mods if I have time for this game again :)

I was using a few mods when I got into it a while ago but none of the big ones like XRM.
 
Cavallino said:
Hmm problem is I dont have a lot of time to play games (now being the exception during the holiday season :)).

So should I just pick up the basics in TC and then start proper in AP?
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Yeah, perhaps for the best. TC is still a great game and I fully recommend it. Pick up the bonus pack for TC http://www.egosoft.com/download/x3tc/bonus_en.php

If you'er looking to just learn the game quickly then I say don't get an overhaul mod because then every wiki will be true to word. Those mods in the bonus pack are recommended by egosoft them selves. You can also pick out almost every mod from the list on the XRM list up so far unless it states "AP only" and I think only 1 does that. There is also another mod on that website that has a long list of them. Right at the top it has an unlimited ammo cheat for the ai. This is a very good idea because the AI ships get given weapons that use ammo and then don't get given the ammo to use them. So they effectively come up against you without weapons sometimes.

mortals said:
Going to try some of these mods if I have time for this game again :)

I was using a few mods when I got into it a while ago but none of the big ones like XRM.
Click to expand...

The difference they can make to your game is quite big. You may find the game harder just because your "go to" ships and tricks may no longer work like they used to. But it''s a better experience for it.
 
What ill do is start with TC and the bonus pack but not dedicate a lot of time into it, because save games are not transfereable between TC and AP apparently? And I prefer to play the "later version of the game", but picking up the basics with TC. What do you think MJ?
 
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